What do you think of McCain's VP choice?

Wow! That’s adventuresome! An inexperienced woman, to try to syphon off Hillary dems to support him? But he loses the experience argument. If he dies in office (he’s much older than Barack), we’ve got a young, more more inexperienced president.

My first, intuitive response is that this will not be good for him.

On the other hand, it is certainly different, and it does say he’s not your father’s Republican. Still, it makes him look worse on environmental issues (she wants ANWAR drilling). She is certainly attractive. Maybe she polls well with those who vote on looks.

Wow!

Well, as of right now, August 29, 10:06 AM CDT, this pick has not been made official, and I’ll believe it if and when McCain makes this announcement. But I’ll answer this assuming it is true.

Bwahahhhaaahahahahaaah, snort, choke.

As an ardent Obama supporter from day one, if this turns out to be true, I couldn’t be happier. Because 1) it undercuts McCain’s whole “experience” argument which seems to be the entire cornerstone of his debate. Many are looking far more to McCain’s VP pick than to Obama’s because McCain is turning 72 today, and he has had cancer, actuaries would not give him the best odds on being able to serve 8 years much less 4. People kind of want someone in the #2 spot who is seen as a strong leader, certainly what he have here is a name picked from relative obscurity. And 2) it pretty much blows his cred with the independents if he picks an ultra conservative #2. McCain has been trying to be two people…on one hand he has had to move considerably to the right over the last 2 years so that his voting record puts him lock step with the Bush agenda. But he’s been trying to run on his “maverick”, bi-partisan reputation from 2000, and in large part any success he’s had has been because he’s focused on his opponent’s weaknesses, rather than his strengths. Picking a pro-life governor of a low population state, particularly one who is fairly young and fairly inexperienced while making a lot of hay about how his opponent is young and inexperienced is going to more than counteract the “hey, look, I picked a woman wow factor.

And I think there’s another downside for him. His record on women’s issues is positively abyssmal. To anyone who in this day and age actually pays attention to things such as issues, as silly and inconsequential as they may seem to some, this is going to seem like another in a long series of panders. It’s going to seem to the pro-Hillary crowd as a cynical move to try to peel off support in a misguided belief that a vote for one woman is the same as the vote for any other woman. In short, I think this solidifies the message that McCain thinks women are by and large interechangable.

Bad, bad pick that he won’t even realize is a bad pick until it’s too late. I hope this is accurate…please, please…about the only thing worse for McCain would be Pawlenty…at least no bridges have fallen down in Alaska recently.

It is a feeble attempt to try and win some women voters. Quite honestly it just shows how desperate he and the republicans are. After Obamas speech last night I don’t see how anyone in their right mind would vote for McCain. Obama has McCain running scared. I have also heard that she is under investigation in her own state.

According to Wikipedia, she’s a whistleblower on her own party, but I didn’t see anything about being under investigation.

Is this an Onion article? Seriously bad choice. She’s only been a governor for two years? Unbelieveable. Obama is going to mop up.

Yes EmpressPixie, I read something about her being investigated for illegally hiring her brother in law or something like that, and that she also has sided with indicted Ted Stevens. Looming scandal, just what the McCain camp needs!

Well, it’s a patently obvious ploy to draw votes from disgruntled Hillary fans. As to her capabilities and qualifications, I have my doubts. And as I have lost my respect for McCain (I actually liked him 8 years ago when he truly did seem to use “straight talk”. This time around, I see him doing and saying whatever it takes to win, and I am sorely disappointed in him.), it has no effect on my vote. But I have to admit that part of me is happy to see a woman in the role, no matter who she is.

I’m kind of opposed to her being pro-life. It will be hard to draw feminists by purely being a woman. Often the feminist ladies care a lot about having a choice those things.

Also, her wiki page it totally worth a read for the dairy thing and the commissioner thing. I remember the commish scandal when it happened.

She’s pro drilling even though she ran on an anti-big oil platform (according to CNBC guests).

I think that Hillary’s boffo speech at the DNC left many of her fans more gruntled than they had been. I hope that as November draws closer, HRS’s supporters will start thinking more clearly.

Seems like a bad choice, if true to me. Dalepetrie summed up the situation really beautifully.

I believe it’s for wanting to fire her ex-bro in law, but perhaps she hired him before she tried to fire him.

She appears to name her children by throwing a dictionary on the floor and blindly pointing at the page that falls open. Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper & Trig are her kids names.

Yeah, kevbo, I wasn’t well versed in what the scandal was about, I think your assertion is more accurate.

Clearly she’ll help to a degree with the base, but I think he suspects she’ll help him w/ the independents simply because she’s a woman…I think he’s mistaken.

One thing that was mentioned on an MSNBC video report about her, is that the Republicans have a habit, every 20 years, of going “outside the box,” (thier words) to get a Veep whom the Dems will laugh at, and then they win with that person.

Examples include:

Nixon picking Spiro Agnew (a Greek) in 1968.

Bush Sr. picking Dan Quayle (a Moron) in 1988.

And now, McCain picking AK Gov. Sarah Palin in 2008.

The “every 20 years cycle” is now complete for this election.

Here’s another video:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22886841#22886841

August 29, 2008, 12:33 PM EDT

Here’s a flattering article about her from June.

JackAdams,

Only thing I’d say about that is I don’t laugh at her. I laugh at McCain’s cynicism. It seems a very clear pander and almost insulting to a degree to think that women are just going to switch over because that’s their one issue. For some women, that will be the only issue that matters, and I wouldn’t scoff at it in the same way I scoffed at Dan Quayle, but on every single level (not just the superficial ones) it seems to be self-defeating, particularly in light of the convention. Time will tell, I can see how he’s going to try to sell her as a great choice, I just can’t see how very many will buy it.

Oh no. She pronounces it “nucular.”

Awwww…you GOTTA be kidding me! Well, it didn’t stop Dubya.

don’t knock it until it happens.

I think it’s GREAT. Obama now has an even BETTER chance of winning!

Another thing occurs to me. When we were all speculating ourselves into a frenzy, one point that everyone seemed to be making is that VPs generally don’t do much to help the ticket, so the defining rule is “do no harm”. Even if Palin is a brilliant choice from a social conservatives standpoint, no matter how much they grumbled, very few were really going to vote for Obama. The independents are who are going to matter, and there HAS to be a huge share of them who look at McCain and say, OK, he seems healthy but he IS 72 and did survive I believe 4 bouts of cancer. At MINIMUM this VP pick opens up the “what if” question, and when it’s answered, what you have is a person who has less than 2 years experience as a governor, no experience in national poltics, and has never managed a budget of more than $7B for a state with one fifth of one percent of the US population! One of the biggest things that seemed to scare independents off from Obama was his “lack of experience”. I fail to see how she “does no harm”, regardless of whether Biden does any good to Obama or not.

Apparently, there’s a lot more to know. ;-)